Striped Bass: The Red Herring in California’s Water Wars

Photo: USFWS/Steve Martarano

By Carolee Krieger, Executive Director, California Water Impact Network

When is a fish a stalking horse? When the California Fish and Game Commission intrudes, apparently. The commissioners have tremendous power in regulating California’s fish and wildlife – and as outdoor writer and C-WIN board member Dan Bacher reported in 2020, their decisions aren’t always in the best interest of the resources they’re sworn to protect.

Striped bass were once abundant in the San Francisco Bay/Delta system and offshore waters, and they remain an immensely popular gamefish. True, they’re an introduced species: they were first released in North State waters in 1879. But they adapted quickly to their new environs, and coexisted well with native species, including Chinook salmon, steelhead and Delta smelt.

As Bacher observed, the commissioners adopted its first Delta Fisheries Management Policy – but they ignored the recommendations of leading fisheries biologists in the process, tossing a 1996 framework that established a numerical goal of three million striped bass for the Bay-Delta system. In doing so, the commissioners tacitly endorsed the spurious claim by San Joaquin Valley corporate growers that striped bass, not excessive water exports, are the main drivers in the catastrophic collapse of the state’s salmon and other native fish.

Corporate farming interests, of course, were delighted by the commissioners’ decision.

“The world is changing,” enthused Michael Boccadoro, a spokesman for the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta. “It’s not fish versus farmers anymore – we need to move ahead.”

In the two years since the decision, the only significant movement has been in the accelerated decline of striped bass and the Bay/Delta ecosystem that supports them.

As Bacher noted in his article, the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta was founded by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, owners of 30,000 acres of almond orchards and 50,000 acres of pistachio orchards in the San Joaquin Valley. As such, the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta is nothing more than a classic “astroturf” organization; it promotes environmental pieties even as its members actively seize control of California’s water supplies to the detriment of ratepayers, small farmers, fish, wildlife, and recreation.

So contrary to Boccadoro’s win-win platitudes, it is about fish versus farmers. Or more accurately, it’s about ratepayer and environmental equity advocates versus corporate agribusiness. The commission cynically ignored the evidence presented by fisheries experts Dr. Peter Moyle, Dr. David Ostrach, and Dr. Cynthia LeDoux Bloom that proved the Bay/Delta ecosystem – and by extension, the people of California – would be best served by a strong striped bass recovery plan that would necessarily include increased flows through the Delta.

Instead, the commissioners caved to agribusiness interests, violating both their remit as guardians of California’s fish and wildlife and their obligations to the citizens of California.

“I’m disappointed that the Commission ignored all of the scientific evidence and the testimony of the overwhelming [number] of stakeholders who insisted on a strong striped bass policy based on objectives and goals,” stated David Ostrach. “The Commission continues to violate the public trust by doing so.”

Ostrach strikes to the heart of the issue here: the public trust. Yes, striped bass are a public trust resource, as are Chinook salmon and the other endangered native fish of the Delta system. But Ostrach’s comments implies a bigger transgression on the part of the commissioners: their decision also egregiously violates the public trust doctrine as it applies to water. By endorsing the position of corporate growers, they are endorsing the ongoing seizure of our greatest public trust resource for the benefit of the few, the powerful, and the politically connected.

There’s a certain irony here, in that this gross negligence of regulatory responsibility is occurring in the most progressive state of the union. Environmental and public trust issues are paramount with Californians. Moreover, the current Fish and Game Commission clearly is operating with the express support of Governor Gavin Newsom. The Newsom administration is supposedly aggressive in pursuing environmental equity – so why not with fish and wildlife? Why not with water?

The facts are clear: California has a miserable history of following the public trust doctrine. The administration has never mattered: Republican or Democrat, all truckled – and continue to truckle – to the handful of corporate interests that export water to the San Joaquin Valley.

This must stop. As we move ever deeper into the Anthropocene – the geologic era characterized by the environmental impacts of human activity – quantification and regulation of California’s limited water resources shift from merely important to critical. Climate change will mean less snow in the Sierra, less net water to our reservoirs – and simply less water. Period.

As Dan Bacher pointed out, striped bass are not the problem. They are a red herring. We all know the real problem, and we need to confront it now.